Controlling light with light via interference on photonic metamaterials

Abstract

It has been discovered in recent years that interactions between coherent light waves and thin-film media can, if the film is much thinner than the wavelength, lead to controllable energy exchange between incident and scattered waves and thereby to a plethora of new technological opportunities. Planar photonic metamaterials—ultrathin media with nano-engineered optical properties—can realize the full potential of this concept to change optical data processing paradigms, spectroscopy and nonlinear optics. We describe how coherent interactions in metamaterials can facilitate nonlinear light-by-light control functions with THz bandwidth at arbitrarily low intensities.